"Fragrance is in the Nose of the Sniffer"
Staff Writer - September 29, 2007
Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, US scientists found that wine and other fragrances are genetically determined in the sniffer.
Some experts smell ripe red fruit, herbs and spices in a glass of wine, others forest floor, wet dog, cat litter box, or graphite. Sometimes newcomers struggle to perceive the same aromas without success and feel bad about it. US scientists recently proved that they shouldn't be hard on themselves.
A US team of scientists from the Rockefeller University in New York, on September 17, 2007, published the result of a research in the journal Nature which suggests that the experts who claim to pick up rich aromas from fine wines may owe more to genetics than to their superior expertise.
The study reveals that small changes in a single gene – identified as OR7D4 – can cause a person to perceive a key ingredient of male body odor and urine as smelling like urine or, most remarkably, vanilla.
Though it has been suspected for longtime that sensing body odor might be genetically determined, the current study is the first that pinpoint the variations of a single gene as responsible for much of the wide differences in aromas perceived by different people.
"Shock horror!" Said Jonathan Ray, wine expert of the British newspaper The Telegraph. "So there is scientific proof that wine lovers talk rubbish. Doesn't everyone after a glass or two?"
"How does one describe what scrambled eggs tastes like, or smoke smells like, without comparing them to something else? So it is that we wine lovers might describe a wine as tasting of truffles, leather, game and rotting vegetables. Well, dammit, that's what old red burgundy often resembles. It certainly doesn't taste of grapes," said Ray.
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